IT security company Panda Security Africa, and audit, advisory and tax firm, BDO, have joined forces to enable BDO to offer a managed security service to its clients using Panda's EDR solution.

According to Panda, cyber criminal activity shows no signs of slowing down in 2018, and businesses need to continually review their cyber security strategies to bring them in line with today's advanced threats.

Traditional security solutions are ill-equipped to fight sophisticated threats such as ransomware, exploits, script-based and other malware-less attacks, and adopting endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology into the cyber security mix is where the solution lies, says Panda.

Graham Croock, BDO Advisory's director of IT Audit and Cyber Laboratory, adds that cyber security is a global concern, needing global security service and product offerings. "Given that BDO and Panda are both global players, the fit is perfect."

The solution will also feed data into the BDO Security Operation Centre operations in Israel and Norway, and will help manage and make sense of the data collected. BDO will be able to use this data and intelligence to help mitigate risk for its clients.

Closing the gap

Traditional endpoint protection solutions can only protect a business against known malware. They don't have the ability to handle attacks involving exploits, file-less malware and other advanced technologies.

Panda's Adaptive Defense solution aims to close the detection gap and hardens protection to stop ransomware, APTs and other sophisticated attack types. It monitors and classifies all running processes to deliver an attestation service that ensures only trusted applications can execute.

Adaptive Defense gathers up to 10 000 data points for each executable. Using big data, machine learning and AI, the service classifies goodware, malware or unknown processes - in real time, says Panda.

Action is automatically taken against malware and unknown processes, blocking them and preventing potential attacks from executing. Manual classification by PandaLabs analysts is done for the 0.015% of programs that cannot be handled automatically.

Jeremy Matthews, regional manager of Panda Security Africa, says the partnership aims to protect digital infrastructures and corporate networks in key industries in Southern Africa. "We are pleased to be a part of this initiative - adding value to BDO's risk consulting and management service with Panda's endpoint security technology and services."